Gradwell launches version of Microsoft?s OCS service

Service to be demonstrated on stand 418,
London Olympia’s UC 2009,
11-12 March 2009.

Gradwell, the leading and award-winning one-stop internet business provider for the UK’s SME sector, announced today it will be demonstrating its leading-edge update of Microsoft’s Office Communication Server (OCS) 2007.

“We will show how OCS provides UM, Voice Communications and tight integration of telephony with existing Exchange, Outlook and Microsoft CRM environments, as a bolt-on product,” said Peter Gradwell, MD of Gradwell.

“Our version can increase the efficiency of businesses communications.”

The service will be demonstrated on Gradwell’s stand 148 at London Olympia’s UC 2009, 11 and 12 March.

“The release in 2007 by Microsoft was a huge step forward. But now, with further progress elsewhere, in my view it requires updating – it has become a cumbersome beast,” commented Peter.

“Until now, it has not talked easily to a standard VoIP platform.”

Unlike other IP-PBX systems, OCS is not self-contained. So customers can use it either as a Voicemail service (eg: linked using a SIP trunk to the normal Gradwell PBX) or used with telephones (both software “Microsoft communicator” and Polycom hardware phones) directly attached to OCS, as a simple PBX.

SIP trunks can be used to link it with a full PBX, to gain fully-featured control over call routing.

Gradwell has built a Hosted PBX solution used by thousands of UK SME customers: they benefit from not having to negotiate a costly onsite PBX, and benefit from zero-cost calls between sites.

Plus they have access to extensions in multiple locations, inbound numbers with different area codes and powerful voicemail, voice menu, hunt groups, call queuing.

“So in a nutshell we have built a hosted OCS gateway, which can be deployed for any customer to permit interconnection with a normal SIP network: we can demonstrate phone calls, voicemail and the presence functionality of the OCS system,” said Peter.